[naar inhoudsoverzicht korte biografieen]

[terug naar inhoud biografie Stolz]

[naar literatuurlijst]

inhoud:

• Introduction
• Youth in Graz (1880-1899)
• Career as conductor in Marburg,Salzburg and Brno (1899-1907) 
• At the Theater an der Wien (1907-1910)
• As freelance composer in Vienna - the song „Servus Du" (1919-1918)
• New media
• World War I 
• Post-war time in Vienna (1918-1924)
• Failure as manager of a theater (1924)
• Berlin - the second career (1925-1932)
 
• „Zwei Herzen im Dreivierteltakt" (1929)
• Evergreens in movies and operettas

BIOGRAPHY first part (1880-1932)

 Robert Stolz was exclusively composer and conductor of light music and in the second half of the 20th century, through which he went with all its ups and downs, he was considered to be the last great exponent of the „silver age of operetta", marked besides him by the names of Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálman, Leo Fall and Oscar Straus. Though „only" composer of the „lightly draped Muse", he was showered with honors more than many other musicians at an old age. The city of Vienna made him an honorary citizen, the Austrian government appointed him as professor, as film music composer he was twice nominee for the „Oscar", monuments were raised for him, streets and places were neamed after him. Austria has two Robert Stolz museums, on the occasion of his 100th birthday in 1980 special stamps were issued and commemorative medals were minted and a „Robert-Stolz-Express" plies between his native town Graz and Vienna.

 Robert showed early dispositions to a musical infant prodigy and the pedagogically experienced parents realized soon that their youngest would become a musician. The eight-year-old Robert went on tour already as „pianist" with his father in Graz and its environs and provoked peals of applause.

 The scholastic achievements of the child prodigy were much less encouraging than his musical performances. Particularly the mathematics meant a insuperable obstacle for him, he failed in the final examination. But he pursued his career as musician all the more purposeful: In 1896, at the age of 16, he graduated from the conservatory of Vienna (among his teachers were Robert Fuchs and Engelbert Humperdinck) and in 1898 he took up his first position. He became assistant repetiteur at the municipal theater of Graz. Though this activity was mot paid, it laid the foundations for his stage experiences.

Career as conductor in Marburg,Salzburg and Brno (1899-1907) 

 Stolz stayed only one season in Marburg. In October 1902 he became second conductor at the theater of Salzburg. He had the spent the time in between, one and a half years, as soldier, and he owed his early discharge to the well-meant mediation of his uncle, a medical officer.

 As conductor in Salzburg, Stolz succeeded soon in winning the favor of the critics and he was successful also as composer with the operetta „Schön Lorchen".

 The great Russian tour with an operetta company, to which Stolz came round in summer 1902, was brilliant and successful at first. But breaches of contract of the ensemble, forced recasts led soon to a financial disaster. Stolz reached Berlin without means and earned his living for some weeks as bar pianist at a brothel. The pianist Alfred Grünfeld found him there and gave him a financial support. After an interlude as conductor of a circus company, Stolz found finally in 1903 an engagement, which turned out to be more stable: He became first operetta conductor at the German theater in Brünn. Brünn (Brno) had an excellent reputation as theater city in the monarchy and was known as stepping stone for young talents. One of the stars, which career started in Brno, was the tenor Leo Slezak. Here, Stolz was in the position to acquire the practice and the competence on the conductor's desk, which laid the foundations of his later international reputation as orchestral conductor. In Brno, Stolz composed the operetta „Manöverliebe" (première on April 15th 1905) and married the singer Grete Holm, who accompanied him at the Theater an der Wien. 

 He staged his own works at smaller Viennese theaters. The variety theater „Colosseum" at Nußdorferstraße was the scene of the première of „Die Lustigen Weiber von Wien" (1908), which libretto was written by the two experienced authors Julius Brammer and Alfred Grünwald. The „Lustige Weiber" were performed here in the course of a variety program, between acrobatic numbers, an usual form of presentation at that time. Eight pieces were published as music and gave welcome supplementary earnings to the composer.

 One year later, Stolz' one-act operetta „Die Commadeuse" (text by Egon dorn) was performed again at the „Colosseum". But in the meantime, the composer planned to write a three-act, full-length work. He composed „Das Glücksmädel", text by Friedrich Thelen and Robert Bodanzky, which was performed for the first time on October 28th 1910 at the Raimundtheater, Robert Stolz conducting. Star of the evening was the extremely popular folk-play actor Alexander Girardi.

 At that time, the private life of the composer was contrary to the public successes. His infidelity with the cabaret singer Franzi Ressel (she became his second wife) was exposed and the marriage with Grete Holm went on the rocks. 

The compositional successes of the early years in Vienna encouraged Stolz to take the risk to leave the sure post at the Theater an der Wien from autumn 1910 on and to live on his earnings as composer and on short-term engagements. One year after the „Glücksmädel" another grat Robert Stolz operetta was performed for the first time at the Raimundtheater: „Die eiserne Jungfrau". Stolz had started the work already soon after leaving the Theater an der Wien in July 1910. This time, his librettist was Viktor Léon, to which greatest successes belonged the libretto of the „Merry Widow". But „Die eiserne Jungfrau" did not succeed. Only four years later, when it was put on the stage in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt in a revised version as „Das Lumperl", it scored a great success.

 The most popular os Stolz' works at that time was not an operetta, but a song in three stanzas: "Servus Du" (1912). The composer told often and with pleasure its history of origin. One evening, that he passed with his friend, the author Benno Vigny, in the rather disreputable „establishment" of Madame Kathrin at Bäckerstraße, he asked Vigny to prove his skill as poet and to write a poem on the spot. A few minutes later, Vigny handed the three stanzas of the chanson „Servus Du", which he had written on a little bag for lack of paper, over to his friend. Also on a paper bag and in a short time Stolz reciprocated with the setting to music, which showed completely for the first time his individual compositional originality.

 The cinema and the movies gave a composer of light music also new opportunities. In 1913, Stolz was commissioned to compose the music for the silent film „Der Millionenonkel". Contrary to the usual movie music of that time, which was exclusively played by one pianist, it had to be an incidental music for great orchestra this time. The film was conceived as particular tribute to Alexander Girardi and showed the star in thirty of his most successful stage parts. Therefore, Stolz used music of the corresponding works and tied them in an individual way. 

The principle, that during the war the Muses had to be silent, does not apply to World War I. Just in the field of the operetta a multitude of works were composed which dominated the repertoire still decades later. The musical life flourished. During the war years, Stoz led a „double life": In the daytime he played marches and dance music with the Deutschmeister, in the evening he started his second life and composed his topical Viennese songs and music-hall songs. He composed three of his most beautiful songs in the middle of the war: „Wien wird erst schön bei Nacht" (text by Wilhelm Sterk), „Im Prater blühn wieder die Bäume" (Kurt Robitschek) and in spring 1918, in the dismal mood of the perishing monarchy, „Das ist der Frühling in Wien" (Arthur Rebner).

 Stolz seized every opportunity to compose a new operetta. His music for the spectacular play „Prinzessin Revue" (Budapest 1916) is forgotten, but his operetta „Der Favorit", performed for the first time in April 1916 at the Komische Oper Berlin himself conducting, included a song, which ranks till today with the most known Stolz evergreens: „Du, du, du sollst der Kaiser meiner Seele sein". 

 Robert Stolz 1923

The years after 1918 were for Austria, which had become after the lost war a small state out of a European Great Power, a period of general hardship, privations and hopelessness. A great influenza epidemic supervened in 1919, which claimed heavy casualties and to which the father of Robert Stolz succumbed too. Stolz felt the death of his father a heavy blow. More than everything else it meant for him the end of a whole epoch.

 The composer devoted himself now mainly to the cabaret and particularly to the enrichment of the repertoire of his wife Franzi. In 1919, he founded with Otto Hein the „Boheme-Verlag" (Boheme publishers) and the same year they published a song, which „hit in the bull's-eye": „Hallo, du süße Klingelfee". The operator, which had to put through the calls, was called „Klingelfee". The song was soon sung in Russian and Czech, in English, French and Italian. In Paris, Jean Gabin integrated it within his repertoire. Nearly just as successful was „Salome, schönste Blume des Morgenlands", an „oriental fox-trot". Arthur Rebner wrote the texts of both songs.

 The changes after World War I changed the vital consciousness and the musical sense too, the Jazz and the American rhythms celebrated a triumphant advance in Europe. Robert Stolz did not close his eyes to this trend. In April 1919, he composed his first Valse Boston, the „Klingelfee" was a one-step, the „Salome" a fox-trot. But this was not a leave-taking of the operetta: In 1920, „Das Sperrsechserl" was performed for the first time at the Wiener Komödienhaus (it had about 2,000 performances in all at Viennese theatres) and „Der Tanz ins Glück" at the Raimundtheater. In 1921, „Die Tanzgräfin" and „Eine Sommernacht" were performed for the first time at the Johann-Strauß-Theater and in 1922 „Die Liebe geht um" at the Raimundtheater. The first opera attempt came also at this time: the one-act opera „Die Rosen der Madonna". 

 Before the „Rivieratraum" Stolz has been a well-off and distinguished man, now he had lost both his whole fortune and his third wife. To escape his creditors, he bought with his last money a ticket to Berlin to build himself a new existence. 

 In his early years in Berlin, Stolz composed „Der Mitternachtswalzer", which was performed for the first time in Vienna in 1926. In 1927, „Eine einzige Nacht" was also put on the stage in Vienna and his success held. 
 
 

„Zwei Herzen im Dreivierteltakt" (1929)

 In 1929, the „Super-Film-AG" asked him, if he was willing to compose the music for musical film „Zwei Herzen im Dreivierteltakt". The title waltz is one of the worldwide known Stolz melodies. He had also a reigning function within the film action. A composer has the inspiration to a waltz melody during a night with a „sweet girl". But in the morning, he has forgotten it and he can not find it as well as the young lady whom he has to thank for the inspiration. They meet again, she inspires him anew to the melody and they become man and wife. The idea of the film inspired Robert Stolz immediately and during the lunch after the conferring of contract he found the waltz that he noted down on the menu card of the hotel for lack of music-paper. The movie was presented for the first time on March 13th 1930 in Berlin and achieved great success. A critic wrote less aptly in the „Berliner Zeitung": „Stolz composed an excellent music... Unfortunately the title waltz is a failure". Forty years later, a polling institute in the USA ascertained the most popular waltzes of the world. It turned out that „Zwei Herzen im Dreivierteltakt" held the second place behind Johann Strauss' "An der schönen blauen Donau".

Evergreens in movies and operettas 

Stolz as conductor

From 1930 to 1932, within three years, Robert Stolz composed and conducted the music of seventeen films in all. A lot of his evergreens were heard at first in movies and became known with them: „Heute nacht - eventuell" (film title and main song), „Ich will deine Kameradin sein" (from „Hokuspokus"), „Musikant, Musikant, wo ist deine Heimat" (from „Ein Tango für dich"), „Adieu, mein kleiner Gardeoffizier" (from „Die lusitigen Weiber von Wien"). As movie star, Jan Kiepura carried the public away with „Mein Herz ruft immer nur nach dir, o Marita" from the film „Mein Herz ruft nach dir".

 Ralph Benatzky composed the music for the operetta „Im Weißen Röss'l", which was put on the stage in November 1930 at the Große Schauspielhaus in Berlin. But it included interludes by other composers, which became real „hits" and caused the great success of the work: „Was kann der Sigismund dafür, daß er so schön ist" is written and composed by Robert Gilbert, „Die ganze Welt ist himmelblau" and „Mein Liebeslied muß ein Walzer sein" by Robert Stolz. His consent that his two interludes were settled by flat-rate royalties cost him a fortune. Zurich was the scene of two successful operetta premiéres in 1932: „Wenn die kleinen Veilchen blühen" and "Venus in Seide".